Introducing a Website Makeover

I know, I know. I had a long hiatus on this blog, produced by a heterogeneous combination of factors that kept me off balance throughout the spring and into the summer. I was probably tempting fate with my New Year’s blog post, asking to be “shot out of a cannon” this year after last year’s medical challenges, and I have plenty on my plate.

At the time, it remained highly uncertain whether the grant proposal I wrote for Augustana Lutheran Church for a rooftop solar energy system would succeed, but by the end of January, the announcement came. Pursuing all the details came next, and I quickly became the logical person to lead the implementation, which has entailed some bureaucratic obstacles that kept me busy. The congregation recently approved the contract with its chosen solar provider. We are waiting for city staff to complete their review, but we are hoping to have the project completed by sometime late this fall.
I did not expect in April to acquire a persistent cold that would last three weeks through a road trip to Minneapolis to the APA National Planning Conference, a subsequent four-day stop in Madison to co-instruct an Emergency Management Institute course, and a week at home afterwards. A visit to the doctor finally resulted in a prescription that eased the remaining dry sinus problems, but the confluence of activities and mild malaise took its toll for a while. I’ll skip the rest of the story, which gets complicated, but by May I was playing catch-up on numerous fronts.
All that said, I am back in the blog-writing saddle in July, with several new topics in the offing. In the meantime, however, I re-engaged web designer Luke Renn to complete a fresh redesign of the entire website on which this blog resides. Toward the end of that process, I grew hesitant to create new blog posts until he was ready to take the new format live. I made one exception for the most recent piece about our acquisition of an electric induction stove because I wanted to discuss the environmental issues connected to that move. I plan to much more often for the rest of the year. The blog, you may already have noticed, has its own new look. I hope we are improving the reader experience.
I hope people like what they see. The old format was growing stale, but it takes a while to spare enough time to think through and produce new copy and new illustrations for a new design. Readers will find a new series of Reflections that still reflect my life experiences and philosophical outlook. I hope to find time eventually, amid competing demands, to generate more photo essays like the one on New Zealand. In the meantime, however, I will be preparing new content for the graduate elective course I will teach again this fall on disaster planning for the University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs. The topic virtually requires an annual refresh because it is a moving target, more than a little bit intellectually demanding. I will also continue to lead work on the independent documentary film I have previously highlighted, Planning to Turn the Tide, whose volunteer crew has grown steadily over the past year. There may be a new book in the works. I am enjoying life but not lacking for ideas or things to do. I guess I got what I asked for.
Jim Schwab